2 - Keep Your Enemies Close

Summary

Murder in the Moonlight: Episode 2 - Keep Your Enemies Close

Introduction and Parallels to "In Cold Blood"

In the second episode of Murder in the Moonlight, host Keith Morrison draws a compelling parallel between the tragic murders of the Stock family and Truman Capote's seminal true crime novel, In Cold Blood. Highlighting the similarities between the Clutter family and the Stocks, Morrison sets the stage for a deep dive into a case that echoes the unsettling narrative of In Cold Blood. He reflects, “In Cold Blood was as famous as a book could be... there were heated disagreements, said Charman disliked Matt” (03:26).

The Stock Family's Tragedy

The serene life of the Stock family on America’s Great Plains was shattered one Easter night in 1959 when Sharmon and Wayne Stock were brutally shot to death in their farmhouse. Their children, Tammy and Steve Stock, grappled with a tumultuous mix of emotions following the murders. The family’s grief culminated in a massive funeral held at Murdoch High School gymnasium, which was "packed to the rafters" with over 2,000 mourners (03:34). Steve recounts the overwhelming scene: “It was just like, holy cow. It was just packed with people. It was really overwhelming” (03:41), while Tammy describes the Stocks as “pillars of the community” (03:26).

Suspect Focus: Matt Livers

As the investigation unfolded, suspicion naturally fell on Matt Livers, Wayne and Sharmon’s 28-year-old nephew. Unlike the industrious Stocks, Matt was considered the black sheep of the family, often bouncing between dead-end jobs and living with his grandmother. Steve Stock shares familial tensions, stating, “Had a lot of falling outs about him staying with grandma and dad” (06:10). Despite Uncle Wayne’s efforts to help Matt, his lack of direction and strained relationships within the family made him a prime suspect.

Interrogation and Confession

Detectives delved into Matt’s background, noting his erratic behavior and strained relations with the family. On April 25, eight days after the murders, Matt was brought in for questioning. Initially cooperative, Matt claimed he was with his girlfriend in Lincoln, Nebraska, during the time of the murders, a statement he would vehemently deny under pressure. During a lengthy interrogation, Matt agreed to take a polygraph test, believing it would exonerate him. However, the polygraph results indicated deception, leading detectives to persist in their questioning. Under intense pressure, Matt broke down, admitting his involvement: “You got a gun right along, right?... Right” (17:47). He detailed his actions, stating, “Put the gun to her face and blew her away... I was already fired up and, you know, had a grudge” (18:13).

Accomplice: Nick Sampson

Matt’s confession revealed the involvement of Nick Sampson, a 21-year-old cousin. Despite Nick’s steadfast denial of any involvement, a subsequent polygraph test showed deception similar to Matt’s. Investigators unearthed critical evidence linking Nick to the crime, including a marijuana pipe found at the scene and a 12-gauge shotgun borrowed from his grandfather—a weapon matching the one used in the murders. Additionally, a suspiciously cleaned 1997 Ford Contour owned by Nick’s brother was discovered, containing blood evidence from Wayne Stock beneath the dashboard (27:19). Nick was ultimately charged alongside Matt, solidifying their roles as perpetrators.

Physical Evidence and CSI Breakthrough

The breakthrough in the case came through meticulous forensic work by CSI Chief David Coford. Initially, the cleaned Ford Contour yielded no evidence. However, after Matt confessed to disposing of the shotgun in the vehicle, Coford re-examined the car using sterile filter paper and discovered a bloodstain, later confirmed to be Wayne Stock’s (28:33). This physical evidence, combined with Matt’s confession and Nick’s incriminating background, provided a comprehensive case against both suspects.

Conclusion and Lingering Mystery

With Matt Livers and Nick Sampson arrested and charged, the community began to find some closure. Steve Stock expressed relief, stating, “We’re not going to wander for the rest of our lives” (21:28). However, the discovery of a mysterious gold ring at the crime scene introduces a new layer of intrigue. Inscribed with two names and three letters, the ring remains an unanswered question, hinting at deeper secrets yet to be uncovered in future episodes. Morrison hints at the significance of this clue, stating, “The key to a secret. And the start of a very strange trip” (30:58).

Notable Quotes

• Steve Stock: “It was just like, holy cow. It was just packed with people. It was really overwhelming” (03:41).
• Matt Livers: “I have absolutely nothing to do with this” (22:23).
• Matt Livers: “Put the gun to her face and blew her away... I was already fired up and, you know, had a grudge” (18:13).
• Steve Stock: “...police are moving on to the next phase of this. We're not going to wander for the rest of our lives.” (21:28).

Looking Ahead

As the episode concludes, Morrison teases future developments with the enigmatic gold ring, promising listeners a deeper exploration into the unresolved aspects of the case. The meticulous unraveling of the Stock family murders showcases the relentless pursuit of justice, while leaving room for further mysteries to emerge.

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Note: Timestamps in brackets (e.g., 03:41) refer to the corresponding moments in the podcast transcript where the quoted statements occur.

Transcript

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[Keith Morrison]

It was 1966 when the archetype of what would come to be known as the true crime novel barged into the culture. In no time at all, that book, In Cold Blood, was as famous as a book could be. And so was its author, Truman Capote. Unusual man, unusual book. In Cold Blood reads like a novel, though it was a true story, the mean hard facts of it exhaustively reported. Literary critics called it a masterpiece. Though the story was as disturbing as a story could be, somehow Capote's masterpiece caught the mood of those turbulent years. In Cold Blood tells the story of a wealthy farm family called the Clutters, Herb, Bonnie, and their two children murdered during an apparent robbery at night in their farmhouse in Kansas in 1959. The story was so influential, such a cultural touchstone, that even decades after its release, people just couldn't help but see the parallels between the Clutters and the Stock families. They were both good people, successful farmers in the middle of America, attacked in their sleep, murdered in cold blood. One line in particular, penned by Capote, seemed fitting to describe what had happened to Wayne and Charman's stock. They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense. Those days that followed the murders were dreadful ones for the three adult Stock children. There was shock and grief and confusion and anger, a whole catalog of emotions they tried to keep busy. There were arrangements to make, a funeral to prepare. It was apparent that the local Methodist church would be too small to accommodate all those who wanted to pay their respects. So it was decided they'd have the funeral in the Murdoch High School gym. It was the right thing to do. The place was packed to the rafters. There was speeches lauding the Stocks and everything about them.

[Tammy Stock]

Daughter Tammy, I call them, pillars of the community.

[Steve Stock]

There was over 2,000 people at the funeral, so wow.

[Keith Morrison]

Son Steve.

[Steve Stock]

They filled the whole gymnasium and the floor and the stands and everything.

[Keith Morrison]

So what was that like, that funeral?

[Steve Stock]

It was a little overwhelming. We were off in a separate area, kind of secluded, and then when it started, they walked us in and it was just like, holy cow. It was just packed with people. It was really overwhelming.

[Matt Livers]

Yeah, it was a great tribute. They were good people and loved by many.

[Keith Morrison]

Leading that huge crowd of mourners were of course, the many members of the Stock's large extended family, watched by a quiet, sharp eyed contingent of people from the sheriff's office. Detectives scanning the crowd. And not long after, they began to focus on one particular member of the family.

[Steve Stock]

I have my own suspicions.

[Keith Morrison]

Oh yes, families can be complicated with their secret feelings, their resentments and private rages. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Dateline's newest podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. Episode two Keep your enemies close. First of all, the fella investigators were keeping an eye on was not Andy Stock. In fact, the police cleared the Stock's youngest son and it didn't take very long. Andy's Easter weekend was entirely accounted for. He couldn't have been the one. So they returned the grief stricken man to his family. Now, the name of this man, this person of interest, was not Stock at all. Even though he was family. His name was Matt Livers and he was wayne and Charman's 28 year old nephew. In fact, Matt attended the Easter dinner at the Stock farmhouse a few hours before the murders. But he wasn't there by virtue of being a family favorite. No, in fact, Matt Livers was considered something of a black sheep. Quite unlike the industrious Stocks. Matt had bounced around from one dead end job to another, never seeming to find his niche. Never seemed that interested in having a niche. Instead, he lived with his grandmother, took advantage of her. In the opinion of the rest of the family, him and dad kind of.

[Steve Stock]

Had a lot of falling outs about him staying with grandma and dad. Didn't think he should be or that he needed to find a job of his own and get out and put a little more effort into things maybe or something. So they kind of butt ahead us a little bit.

[Keith Morrison]

Even so, Matt's Uncle Wayne had frequently gone out of his way to help the young man get going in life. Not that it did much good.

[Steve Stock]

One time, I was at work, and dad called me and said, wanted to know if he could stop by and see me. So he did, and he had matt with him, and he'd spent the whole day driving matt around lincoln Applying for jobs. And I was like, you know, wow. And there's another guy there working with me. When they left, he's like, I don't know anybody that would do that. You know, anybody that would take their nephew out and drive all over town Helping him find a job. He goes, that's really cool that your dad would do that.

[Keith Morrison]

Still. When family members learned that detectives were looking at matt, they had opinions. For one thing, they told police he seemed a bit slow and different. But more to the point, some of them had noticed problems between matt livers and the stocks. They. They described heated disagreements, Said charman disliked matt, but said the surviving stocks, their parents didn't complain about him, not openly, anyway.

[Tammy Stock]

In our family, they didn't bother us with the little things. They never made anything into a big production.

[Keith Morrison]

No drama household.

[Tammy Stock]

No drama household.

[Keith Morrison]

Still, after the murders, well, everyone was a suspect, and matt was no different in that respect. Again, the stock son, steve.

[Steve Stock]

I think in my head, I went to it a little bit, Just knowing that they hadn't got along real well.

[Keith Morrison]

So. A few days after the murders, Detectives visited matt lyra's former employer, Asked about his personality, Asked about rumors that he had a temper. They assigned officers to keep watch on him. They even went through his garbage. And then on April 25, eight days after the murders, Investigators asked matt to come down to the station and answer some questions.

[Matt Livers]

You're not being drugged in here. You were invited in here, Right? Right. Came here of your own free will?

[Keith Morrison]

Certainly, said matt, happy to help. And he took a seat in the interrogation room. The conversation was recorded.

[Matt Livers]

You're free to leave at any time. Well, I'm here to cooperate with you gentlemen. Okay?

[Keith Morrison]

He was, or seemed to be, courteous, deferential. He said, almost with a sense of childlike wonder, that he'd never been interviewed by police before. Things proceeded from there.

[Matt Livers]

I'd like to know why, but who, what, when, where and how and why?

[Keith Morrison]

Of course, the investigators wanted to know where matt livers was when the murders happened, who could vouch for him? And he told them that after the big family easter dinner with the stocks, he drove to lincoln, nebraska, About a half an hour away and tucked in with his girlfriend sarah. Stayed there all night. Sarah could confirm it he said, oh, and Sarah's young son and a roommate were there, too. Mind you, he told the investigators he hadn't always been in his Uncle Wayne Stark's good books. He knew he was not exactly a family favorite. And he and his uncle had disagreed about a thing or two. A tiff, Matt called it a minor thing. But this questioning session went on for quite some time. Five hours, in fact. So naturally, a lot of those questions were asked again and again and again. Just a different way of putting it each time. Why so long? Well, there was a reason for that. Matt seemed to know more than he was saying. It seemed like he was hiding something. So finally, the detective asked him if he'd agree to take a polygraph. And Matt said, yes, he would. So they hooked him up. And here he was getting and answering the big question.

[Matt Livers]

Do you know the share of food cost?

[Keith Morrison]

We bought the wine, folks.

[Matt Livers]

Now.

[Keith Morrison]

With that simple no. Mad Libers tried to put an end to it. Surely those cops who'd been badgering him for all these hours, who didn't seem to believe him, would be convinced by the polygraph, right? It would prove he was telling the truth. Matt believed. And now he could finally get out of there and go home. And, well, the police believed in the polygraph. Yes, they did. But not quite the way Matt was hoping for. Because the polygrapher told Matt, quite bluntly, he failed.

[Matt Livers]

Your subconscious body is telling the machine. You cannot fool it. I didn't have anything to do with this. You did. I did not. You did. I did not. Bill, you did. I'm sorry. You did.

[Keith Morrison]

So they went back to the interview room, where the tone of the questions became quite pointed. Accusing even.

[Matt Livers]

Like I said, I want to get my name out of this. I had nothing to do with this.

[Keith Morrison]

Again and again, Matt denied having anything to do with murdering Wayne and Charmin stock more than 100 times.

[Matt Livers]

All I remember is sleeping in bed that night. I never did anything.

[Keith Morrison]

I. Gosh.

[Matt Livers]

I mean, my goodness.

[Keith Morrison]

But the more he said it and the more insistent he was.

[Matt Livers]

Guys, I meant nothing to do with this. Let's just get this out the over, okay?

[Keith Morrison]

The more sure the detectives were that Matt was lying. They were quite certain. In fact, we've had so many people.

[Matt Livers]

Sitting in that chair. Okay. That think that they're smarter than us. And you're not? No. Okay. Dumb as a break. No, you're not. Dumb as a brick. Okay? You made a mistake. You did you up, and now you gotta pay for it.

[Keith Morrison]

Why were investigators in Nebraska so convinced Matt Levers was lying. Well, in addition to the polygraph, there was a state profiler who suggested that this was the kind of crime committed by young males who knew their victims. And add to that, said the profiler, this was the sort of crime that appeared to be very personal. Two executions. A crime very likely driven by intense personality, personal emotion toward the victims. Feelings like jealousy, anger or revenge. Finally, there was this. The Starks lived in the middle of nowhere, and it made sense that a family member would know exactly where to find them. But a stranger. A stranger would have no idea if those factors were bells. Matt Livers rang more bells in a royal wedding. Loudly. And in that interview room, detectives were losing patience.

[Matt Livers]

You religious man? What's God gonna say, huh?

[Keith Morrison]

Eventually, they got quite explicit, telling Matt that he was headed for death row unless he would start giving them what they knew to be true.

[Matt Livers]

I'm telling you right now, I'm going to do everything I can. If I walk out that door looks right now, and you don't cop to this, you don't admit to me exactly what you've done, I'm going to walk out that door and I'm going to do my level best to hang your ass from the highest tree. You're done. I'll. I'll go after the death penalty. I'll push. I'll push and I'll push until I get everything I need to make sure you go down hard for this. This is your one shot. Look at the olive branch out right now and attempt to help you. Okay? Literature, gas, lethal injection. That's what kind of case this is.

[Keith Morrison]

And it was that technique that finally produced the desired effect. Rough, perhaps, yes. But Matt Livers admitted it, as if his denial was too heavy a load to carry. It happened rather suddenly here.

[Matt Livers]

You got a gun right along, right?

[Keith Morrison]

Among the traits of a good detective is persistence. And it is prized because once the door is opened, things spill out. And spill out they did.

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[Keith Morrison]

It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle who thinks he can just get.

[Matt Livers]

On a microphone On a podcast and start publicizing this.

[Keith Morrison]

From iHeart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County. I got recruited into the mob when I was 17 years old. Meet Kenny, an enforcer for the legendary Chicago outfit. And that was my mission, to snuff the life out of this guy. He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago fire department.

[Matt Livers]

I had a wife and I had two children.

[Keith Morrison]

Nobody knew anything. People are dying.

[Tammy Stock]

Is he doing this every night?

[Keith Morrison]

Torn between two worlds. I'm covering up murders that these cops are doing.

[Matt Livers]

He was a freaking crazy man.

[Keith Morrison]

We don't know who he is, really. He is my father and I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County. Available now listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts now. They had the final answer. Or did they? Nothing has more suspense than a dateline mystery. And no one wants to wait to find out what happens next. That's why everyone needs Dateline Premium, where listening is always ad free. You get the whole story and nothing but the story. Or do you? Yes, actually, you do. Subscribe now on Apple podcasts, Spotify or Dateline premium.com six hours. Enough time to cook an 18 pound turkey or watched two professional football games. And six hours was enough time in the face of intense questioning by the detectives for Matt Livers to finally break and begin to admit his involvement in the murders of his aunt and uncle Wayne and Charman Stock.

[Matt Livers]

You got a gun, right? Wrong. Right. And you took that gun back to your Uncle Charles house, right? Right or wrong? Come on, man. Right.

[Keith Morrison]

Now that the cat was out of the bag, Matt began filling in more of the blanks, the awful specifics of how he killed them, for one thing.

[Matt Livers]

Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Okay. And then as I headed out, I just to him and blew him away. I was already fired up and, you know, had a guess. I had a grudge to. So I guess.

[Keith Morrison]

And then a bonus. Remember that blood spatter and the void on the wall behind that was clear evidence that a second killer was involved. And Matt Livers filled in the blank.

[Matt Livers]

You weren't on that line. Is that right or wrong? Right. There was somebody else with you, wasn't there? Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

And who was that second person? Matt was beyond denial now, beyond hesitation. He simply offered the name, gave it up without protest.

[Matt Livers]

Who was with you that night? Nick Sampson.

[Keith Morrison]

Nick Sampson. He was a 21 year old cousin on another branch of that big family tree. And that is how the interview ended. They cuffed Matt, then led him off to the county jail. And they sent someone to pick up Nick Sampson. And they charged them both with murder. It was late in the evening when Andy Stark answered his phone and heard the news from one of the detectives. Andy called his sister Tammy.

[Tammy Stock]

It was about 12:30 at night. He says, tam, I need you to be awake. Are you awake? And I said, yeah. And he says, are you sure? And I said, yes, I'm awake. What's going on? And he said, they arrested Matt and Nick. And I said, matt? Nick who? And he said, our cousin Matt and Nick Sampson.

[Keith Morrison]

And thus, yet another emotion was added to Tammy's grief.

[Tammy Stock]

My husband had given me the phone. I was sitting up in bed and I said, should I be shaking? And he said, that's normal. The shock.

[Keith Morrison]

But Matt Lyvers had been with them at Easter dinner. And then just a few hours later, according to him, he returned with Nick Sampson in tow to kill his aunt and uncle, her parents. Tammy tried to focus. Things needed doing.

[Tammy Stock]

Our first reaction was, is Grandma? Somebody needs to tell our grandma she had just lost her only son and her grandson is being arrested for this. And we thought, what 80 year old has to go through this? And pretty much we were up at dawn and we called the pastor and said, you need to meet us because we need to tell Grandma and we don't know how to do it. And so we went over and talked to grandma that next day and told her. And just like us, she's like, I don't. I don't understand. And I said, grandma, none of us understand any of this.

[Keith Morrison]

Tammy's brother Steve, did it give you any sense of, oh, well, at least somebody has been is found responsible to make it feel any better?

[Steve Stock]

I think there was. I had quite a bit of that. Like, police are moving on to the next phase of this. We're not going to wander for the rest of our lives. So I was relieved, I guess, to know that they had somebody.

[Keith Morrison]

And just who was the accomplice? Nick Sampson. Just an ordinary guy. The investigators figured, unlike Matt, he had a job. Two jobs, in fact. By day, he reconditioned propane gas cylinders. Evenings, he was a cook at Bulldogs Bar in Murdoch. Anyway, once he was printed and processed, they sat him down in an interview room and they asked him straight out, why did he think they were talking to him?

[Matt Livers]

They think that I'm involved with the murders.

[Keith Morrison]

But Nick Sampson was not. Like Matt Liver's. Well, Matt initially denied Any involvement before changing his story and confessing. Nick stuck with one story and one story only.

[Matt Livers]

You know that have absolutely nothing to do with this.

[Keith Morrison]

During three hours of questioning, Nick denied everything.

[Matt Livers]

What I need from you is absolute honesty. I am being 100% honest.

[Keith Morrison]

Then one of the detectives employed a frequently used and often successful technique. The what if question.

[Matt Livers]

If something's left of that house, okay, with your DNA and or your prince, how are you gonna explain how I got there? I'm not. Cause I don't think you have my DNA anywhere near that house. Cause I've never been in that house. Never, ever once in my entire life have I ever been inside their house.

[Keith Morrison]

Then, like Matt, Nick agreed. In fact, he volunteered to take a polygraph.

[Matt Livers]

I have absolutely nothing to do with this.

[Keith Morrison]

But again, the result wasn't quite what Nick was obviously hoping for.

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[Keith Morrison]

The polygrapher said the test showed that Nick Sapson was deceptive when he denied being at Wayne Stark's home when Wayne was shot. Just as he had done with Matt Libers. The polygrapher told Nick his own subconscious body had done the confessing for him.

[Matt Livers]

Your body's telling me you were there. All the information that's come in through the law enforcement is showing you were there. Your body, you have no way of controlling that. Your body is telling me you were there, but I know I wasn't.

[Keith Morrison]

Polygraph results in hand, the detectives went back at it hard. This time.

[Matt Livers]

We were at the house when he was killed. Your body's telling me otherwise. So we need to get past that. What's going on there? I honest to God, was not at the same time house when they were two.

[Keith Morrison]

But the investigators did not believe Nick Sampson after all. Matt Lyrus had already told them Nick was there behind the whole thing. Actually, Matt said they planned it all out in the two days or so before the murder. They talked it through on their cell phones. So said the detectives, they knew Nick Sampson was lying. Just like the polygrapher said you were.

[Matt Livers]

There when he was shot. Nobody's arms. He told me that. I was not there. Believe me. You sit in the machine. I have to go with my charts. All the years I've been doing that, the charts have been right on. Oh, I wasn't there. That is to swear to God's truth. Well, you got there. I was nowhere around. Murdoch, I want you to understand how the system works. I do understand. I'm getting framed for something I didn't even do.

[Keith Morrison]

But was he? Because the test results from all that physical evidence at the murder scene were beginning to come back. As was the background check on Nick Sampson. Sampson, all of 21 years old at the time, had a problem with marijuana. As a teenager, he had done two separate stints in boys homes. And while he denied being a marijuana user anymore, remember investigators had found that marijuana pipe at the scene of the crime. Then when detectives visited Nick's grandfather in Murdoch, the old man told them that a month before the murders, nick had borrowed a 12 gauge shotgun from him. That's the same gauge weapon that was used in the murders. Then investigators executed a search warrant at Samson's home. And among the items seized from under the bed, that very 12 gauge shotgun borrowed from his grandfather and a pair of blue jeans, which were examined by CSI Chief David Coford's team. Remember, Cofode was the big city CSI guy from O Omaha who had been brought in to help.

[G]

We had a pair of pants. It looked like blood on him. We had tested that and that was positive. Now that was the real smoking gut. I mean, you've got him.

[Keith Morrison]

And there was even more. More evidence. Remember that car apparently seen by the newspaper carrier, parked just a mile from the farmhouse on the night of the murders? The one described as tan or light brown. A sedan that later passed the newspaper carrier going pretty fast. 60 or 70 miles an hour on a gravel road. Well, detectives found it. A 1997 Ford Contour owned, believe it or not, by Nick Sampson's brother. And the car had been cleaned, detailed actually, at 5:30, Easter Monday morning. Which was just a few hours after Wayne and Charman Stock were gunned to death. Who details the car at 5:30 in the morning?

[G]

That's exactly why the detectives thought it was pretty suspicious.

[Keith Morrison]

So the CSI team searched the car and found nothing. But then CSI chief CofO got a call from one of the lead investigators.

[G]

When Matt confessed, he said they threw the shotgun in the backseat of the Ford Contour. And he said maybe you can find some, you know, transfer evidence there Maybe just take another look at it, you know. And I said, well, maybe we missed it.

[Keith Morrison]

So they examined the car again. And Kofod himself, using sterile filter paper, wiped the interior surfaces of the car. And just below the steering wheel on the dashboard, he found it. A stain. And it looked like blood.

[G]

And I just took it along that edge and wiped it because I figured that way I wouldn't miss anything. And it reacted.

[Keith Morrison]

So you got a hit, though?

[G]

I got a presumptive positive, yes.

[Keith Morrison]

And before long, tests confirmed that what the CSI chief found under the dashboard was indeed blood. The blood of Wayne Stock, the victim. And the only way anyone could figure out how it got there was via Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. So there it was. Persistence had paid off. With a confession and some real physical evidence to back it up. The murders of Wayne and Charman Stock had been solved. So it certainly seemed. And of course, around the sheriff's office, they felt pretty good about that. Certainty set in. They'd bet their careers on it now. And the whole apparatus of the law began to relax a little. Except. Except for the one who found. Stumbled on it, really. An overlooked little curiosity everyone else missed somehow. It was a ring. A gold ring, just lying there in the farmhouse, quite unobtrusively in a place it had no business being. And no one seemed to have any idea who the thing belonged to. Such a mystery. Coming up in future episodes of Murder in the Moonlight. There were three words in the inscription. Two names and three tiny letters. A puzzle. The key to a secret. And the start of a very strange trip. That must have been a shocker to get that information, to have it across your desk.

[Matt Livers]

A huge shocker that pretty much sends a chill down your spine.

[Keith Morrison]

Murder in the moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop is the producer. Brian Drew, Kelly Laudeen, Bruce Berger, Marshall Housefeld and Candace Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gorfin is co executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News, audio sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Every morning, we choose how to begin our day. I think about the people at home. They tune in because they are curious. They care about their world and they care about each other.

[Steve Stock]

There's always something new to learn, whether.

[Keith Morrison]

A news event or a new recipe. And when. When we step through the morning together.

[Steve Stock]

It makes the rest of the day better.

[Keith Morrison]

We come here to make the most of today.

[Matt Livers]

We are family.

[Keith Morrison]

We are today Watch the Today show with Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin, weekdays at 7am on NBC.